We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful RANNY LEVY. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with RANNY below.

Hi RANNY, thanks for joining us today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

I really resonate with this question because, in many ways, my nonprofit organization teaches kids skills that will serve them for the rest of their life. Today’s educational system falls short in teaching critical thinking to young people, and that is the basis from which everything spans at KIDS FIRST!

Recently, we did a study of alumni of our program, interviewing kids that joined our KIDS FIRST! Film Critics program 10 years ago or so, who are now either in college or working young professionals. We asked them how their experience as a KIDS FIRST! reporter affected their college work and/or their work in the industry. Here are the key things we learned.

1. Most of them said that the skills they learned – in writing, presentation, on-camera, and working as a team are things they use every day in the work they do today. They told us that thanks for what they learned with KIDS FIRST!, it made their college work so much easier than their peers who hadn’t had the types of experience they did.
2. Most of them now work in the entertainment industry, in some way or other, but not all. One is now a neuroscientist, and surprisingly, she also commented about how learning to speak on camera and interview professionals is something that she has used in her work. She speaks frequently at conventions or manages zoom meeting with her team all around the world and found that the skills she needed for those events were things she learned with us.
3. Finding a satisfying career is part of what every college student goes through, even those that go into college thinking they know exactly what they want to do. I believe that from all the interviews that we have our young reporters do – at age 9 to 19, with C-Suite executives, creators, production people and actors, they get a really good grasp of the variety of jobs there are in the entertainment industry and beyond. Everyone isn’t cut out to be the next Taylor Swift, but it’s good to know that the person designing Taylor’s costumes is every bit as happy with her life as her boss is – perhaps even more.
4. Teamwork and peer support. I just ready Sandy Greenberg’s book, Hello Darkness My Old Friend, about how when he unexpectedly went blind as a college junior, his roommate, Art Garfunkel, insisted that he return to college and promised to help him get around the campus and New York City as a whole – a pretty big deal for a newly diagnosed blind person. On top of that, Art said, “It’s not that I’m doing all this for you, I need you here.” That is true friendship and we all need that kind of friendship in our life. That’s another thing that our kids at KIDS FIRST! get out of being part of our team – they develop life long friendships with other kids all across the country and beyond. That’s pretty important when you live in a small town in Georgia and no one else there is interested in making films like you are.

RANNY, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My organization, Coalition for Quality Children’s Media / KIDS FIRST!, founded in 1991, grew out the media literacy movement combined with a need to provide guidance for parents and kids for making good media choices. This was a time when there was a very serious concern about the negative effects of media on children, and we felt that it was important to be a resource for authentic reviews by qualified adults and children themselves about media programming, recognizing that there was a lot of good programming available that didn’t receive anything close to the awareness of the latest action-adventure blockbuster. The Children’s Television Act had been misinterpreted by studios to justify their weak programming attributes such as “The Jetsons teaches kids about life in the future.” So we were involved in speaking with our federal delegation about strengthening the CTA in order to make it do what it was designed to do.

Today, one of our strengths is our team of 65 tween and teen entertainment reporters who review all of the latest media rated PG-13 or younger. These kids offer informed and conscientious reviews in both written and video tape format. You can find their reviews on our website, on social media and in several partner print publications, such as Kidsville News and News-0-matic, which reach over 7 million people every month. A recent survey of alumni from this program showed how these young people benefited from their experience in so many ways, developing life long skills in writing, presentation and leadership.

Additionally, we curate a collection of films from independent and student filmmakers that we offer to over 40 film festivals and other organizations worldwide. In the upcoming year, we plan to further develop our partnerships with international organizations in Ukraine and Pakistan and provide more interactivity between youth participants in both countries. It ties into another goal of our which is tolerance and multicultural understanding.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Every business has its ups and downs. The ups are easier to deal with than the downs and I always pray to have more of those than the latter. So, let me tell you about the day I discovered that we owed the IRS $50,000 in back payroll taxes.

I was the working president of the organization and I didn’t pay much attention to payroll tax. I left it up to our bookkeeper and board treasurer to handle that and kept my focus on programming, making sure that we delivered what we promised in as high a quality as possible.

Somehow, rather than pass a letter on from the IRS to the treasurer, I opened it and wow! I almost fainted. Apparently we hadn’t been paying payroll taxes for some time – months – because we had a shortage of funds, but I had no idea that was going on. At this point, we owed $15K in taxes and $35K in penalties and interest. Now our annual budget was only $250K so this was a significant amount and we didn’t have it sitting in a bank account where we could just write a check.

I called the treasurer and he was shocked – I was more shocked that he wasn’t aware of the situation. I called the bookkeeper and he was defensive – well, we were short on funds and I didn’t have a way to pay the taxes. I asked him why he didn’t tell me and he was silent. Busted!

Then, I called a friend who was a tax attorney and he made an appointment for me to come and consult with him – the first hour free! Loved that. I gathered together whatever I could that was relevant to the situation and met with him the following day. He looked me in the eye and said, “you don’t owe enough money to warrant hiring me, so here’s what you’re going to do.” Then he described a plan that even I could understand.

To begin with, there is no negotiating with the IRS on payroll taxes; there is no way for those to be reduced. They really really belong to your employee who will get them back when they retire. So, he said, you’re going to at least have to find the $15K to pay those. The interest and penalties are entirely negotiable and he advised that I make an appointment with the IRS to meet with them in person (this is well before covid) and plead on their mercy. He told me it is really entirely up to the agent that you meet with whether or not they will cut you any slack or make you pay the entire amount.

I’m ratting this off as if it all happened quickly, but this all took place over a few weeks where I had nightmares every night, convinced that I was going to end up in prison. But, I made the IRS appointment. I called every board member to see how we could raise the $15K and, in the end, the IRS took away all the interest and penalties and one of our board members had a foundation that gave us the funds to pay off the $15K.

Lesson from this? Never put your complete trust into someone else to handle your money or your taxes. Always stay on top of it yourself and answer those pesky letters from the IRS or similar. Then, thank everyone profusely.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

The short answer is: Consistent quality and not compromising.

My dad was a NASA contractor and one thing I learned from him is that the quality of your work has to be impeccable. Obviously, when building a spaceship all of the different components have to go through rigorous testing to make sure they will stand up in the most extreme circumstances.

We certainly were not building a spaceship with KIDS FIRST! Although sometimes it felt that way. And, if you look at the film reviews we wrote 32 years ago and compared them with what we write, or release on video today, it would be night and day in terms of look and quality. But we always did what we said we would do and put a lot of effort into training our reviewers – both adults and kids. Testing them. Tweaking their work. And designing evaluation tools so that the output had a consistent look and feel to it.

I remember the day that I got a call from Mike Levitz at the New York Times asking me to co-author a book with them called: The New York Times / KIDS FIRST! Guide to the Best Children’s Videos. Peggy Charren, the force behind the Children’s Television Act put him in touch with me and, la voila, thus began an amazing work relationship. My high school aged daughter was working for KIDS FIRST! at the time, managing our volunteer jurors. She and I would do our regular work during the day and then, after 5, would work on compiling all of the reviews that we had, making sure they were consistent, and then faxing them off to Mike for feedback. I still remember the day he called me and said, “Who’s holding back on the stars? Here are five reviews of different Thomas the Tank videos and some are 5 out of 5 stars, some only have 4 and one only has 3. Are they really all that different?” Good question and we had been relying on our jurors for their expertise as we had some of the country’s best media librarians and child development specialists on board. Well, back to the drawing board and lesson learned – don’t leave the final rating up to the jurors. Take charge yourself to make sure there is consistency.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kidsfirst.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kidsfirstcoming_attractions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KidsFirstMedia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coalition-for-quality-childrens-media-kids-first/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KidsFirstMedia
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KIDSFIRSTFilmCritics
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kidsfirstmedia?lang=en

Image Credits
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